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Andrey Sozinov
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Alexey Razin
By the end of last year, AMD captured more than 30% of the global market for x86-compatible processors, noticeably squeezing out Intel in this area. And what is remarkable, this happened against the backdrop of a strong decline in demand for PCs and laptops – a steady increase in sales of server chips helped.
According to the latest report from analyst firm Mercury Research, AMD’s share of x86 processor shipments for all of 2022 was 29.6%, compared to 70.4% for Intel. This is a huge, significant jump from the previous year, when AMD had just 23.3% versus Intel’s 76.7%.
AMD achieved an even more impressive result in the fourth quarter: its share of the x86-compatible chips market grew to 31.3%. This means an increase of 5.7 percentage points year on year and an increase of 2.8 points from the previous quarter. Note that AMD almost repeated its maximum – in the second quarter of 2022, its share was 31.4%.
According to Dean McCarron, head of Mercury Research, AMD and Intel’s share performance over the past few quarters is more reflective of chip shipments to PC OEMs, cloud providers, channel partners and retail chains rather than demand from end users. . This is driven by a significant drop in demand for chips, causing the same OEMs to prioritize selling excess CPU inventory over buying more from Intel and AMD. Because of this, don’t expect AMD and Intel’s market share data to accurately reflect user preferences until the end of 2023.
«Much of the drop in shipments is due to the buildup of excess inventory in previous quarters, which impacted current sales – Suppliers CPUs are also intentionally limiting supplies to speed up inventory drawdown.McCarron wrote. — In addition, demand for PC processors has slumped, and macroeconomic concerns are forcing PC OEMs to also reduce their inventories.».
In the fourth quarter of last year, AMD’s share grew the most in the desktop processor segment, to 18.6%, while Intel remained at 81.4%. For AMD, this is an increase of 4.7 points over the previous quarter, and 2.4 points more than in the same period last year. But still, this is below the 20.5 percent share that AMD held in the desktop CPU market in the second quarter of 2022 or 20.1 percent in the third quarter of 2020.
It is noted that shipments of processors for desktop PCs in the fourth quarter fell sharply after a significant increase in the third quarter. “While both Intel and AMD’s desktop processor shipments have dropped significantly, Intel’s shipments have fallen significantly more, causing AMD to increase its share of a declining market, but again, this reflects changes in Intel’s inventory more than final demand.“, – said McCarron.
In the laptop processor segment, AMD’s share rose sequentially by 0.8 points to 16.4%, but in the annual comparison, AMD’s position fell sharply: by 5.1 points compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. AMD held a maximum of 24.8% in the mobile x86 processor market in the second quarter of 2022.
AMD’s consistent growth in mobile CPU share was in large part the result of Intel facing a steeper drop in shipments than its competitor. On the other hand, AMD’s sharp year-over-year drop reflects the company’s much smaller presence in the low-end Chromebook chips segment.
Finally, in the server processor market, AMD’s share hit a new high with 17.6% of the market. However, the share in this segment practically stopped growing – the increase amounted to only 0.1 p.p. This is the smallest increase in AMD’s share of the server segment in almost four years. However, we note that AMD has been continuously increasing its share in the server segment for the 15th quarter in a row. We also note that compared to the same period in 2021, AMD’s share increased by 6.9 points. AMD’s growth slowdown is due to increased shipments of Intel Xeon, as well as Xeon Max series chips.
Also, Mercury Research specialists presented data on the dynamics of sales of processors with Arm architectures, which are gaining popularity in the PC segment through the efforts of both Apple and Qualcomm. Arm-compatible solutions in the PC segment were able to take an impressive 13.3%.
And for Arm, this is not the most successful outcome of the quarter. In the third quarter of last year, Arm architecture processors accounted for 14.6% in the PC segment, but by the fourth quarter their share had declined. However, it is still more than the 10.3% market share that Arm chips held in the fourth quarter of 2021. Counterpoint Research data, as reported yesterday, mentions Arm-compatible processors reaching an 11% share in 2021, and a 13% share in 2022. The statistics of these two sources, as can be seen, diverge minimally.
